da poker： The last round game between North Zone and South Zone on January 31will decide the champions of this year’s Deodhar Trophytournament
Partab Ramchand28-Jan-2000The last round game between North Zone and South Zone on January 31will decide the champions of this year’s Deodhar Trophytournament. This became clear after the penultimate round of matchesin the competition on Friday. While East Zone defeated West Zone byfour wickets at the Sardar Patel stadium in Ahmedabad, South Zonesnatched a thrilling two wicket victory over Central Zone at theBrabourne stadium in Mumbai.East Zone finished their fixtures with two wins and two defeats intheir four games. West Zone and Central Zone, who meet in the otherfinal round game on January 31, have got a record of one win and twolosses in three matches. Both the teams then are out of thereckoning. So it all boils down to a straight title clash betweenSouth Zone and North Zone, who each have a record of two wins and onedefeat from their three games.West Zone would have been in the reckoning had they beaten East Zoneon Friday. But East Zone, with a fine all round performance, got thebetter of West Zone with ten balls to spare. Put in to bat, West Zonestarted badly losing the wickets of ND Modi (2) and Iqbal Siddiqui(17) with only 42 runs on the board. But then they made a grandrecovery thanks to a third wicket partnership of 162 runs off 31.4overs between Sitanshu Kotak and Vinod Kambli. The two in form lefthanders made runs confidently against a six man East Zoneattack. Kambli seemed headed for his third successive century in thecompetition but on 82 he was bowled by Laxmi Ratan Shukla. The28-year-old left hander faced 91 balls and hit eight fours and a six.At 204 for two in the 42nd over, West Zone had the perfect springboardto take off for a really imposing total. But after the fall of Kambli,the batsmen who followed did not exactly rise to the occasion. Shukla,in the midst of an inspired spell, got rid of Kotak as well in hisnext over. The Saurashtra left hander made exactly 100. He faced 143balls and hit eight fours. Amol Muzumdar, Zakir Khan and Nayan Mongiaall fell quickly in an attempt to push the scoring rate along. ButAbhijit Kale made some fine strokes in hitting an unbeaten 28 off 21balls with a six and a four. West Zone were still able to post achallenging total of 262 for seven in 50 overs. Shukla finished as themost successful bowler with three for 46 off ten overs while skipperand veteran left arm spinner Utpal Chatterjee played a major role incurbing West Zone in the slog overs in picking up two for 44, alsofrom ten overs.When East Zone began their reply, they were rocked by Iqbal Siddiquiwho dismissed SS Das and Rohan Gavaskar with successive deliveries inhis first over. Tottering at 11 for two, East Zone staged a recoverywith Nikhil Haldipur (67) and RR Parida (32) adding 71 runs for thethird wicket off 11.3 overs. Parida was then bowled by Garsondia afterfacing 38 balls and hitting five fours. The recovery process wasmaintained with Haldipur and Saba Karim increasing the score by 63runs during a fourth wicket association that lasted 11.5 overs.Haldipur was then caught by Siddiqui off Nilesh Kulkarni. He faced 62balls and hit seven fours. Karim and SS Raul (24) then added 69 runsoff 13.5 overs during a vital fifth wicket partnership before thelatter was run out. The successive stands had put East Zone in aposition from where they could force a victory and Karim and RajivKumar took their side closer to the target by adding 36 runs for thesixth wicket off 7.1 overs. Finally, with victory only 13 runs away,Karim was bowled by Kotak for 98 in the 46th over. The wicketkeeperfaced 110 balls and hit eight fours and two sixes while playing acrucial knock. Rajiv Kumar (17) and P Jaichandra (6) then added thefinishing touches and East Zone were home when the former hit Kamblifor a brace.